Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
